While details are still sketchy regarding the Sunday morning ambush at Forza Coffee Company, authorities claim that a single gunman — tentatively identified as a wanted violent ex-con named Maurice Clemmons — may be the shooter. Despite a lengthy criminal record, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee granted Clemmons clemency while he was in office.

The suspect — presumably Clemmons — walked into the shop, specifically targeted the four officers, and executed two of them at close range while they were still sitting down. Another officer was gunned down from a standing position, and the fourth struggled with the gunman and may have fired at him before collapsing and dying outside the shop. All four officers were wearing body armor and were working on their laptops doing pre-shift paperwork when they were killed. The three male officers and one female officer have not been identified, pending the notification of their next of kin. The group was identified only as a patrol squad and their sergeant. (Update: The officers have now been identified.)

The shooter fled on foot. At no point did he threaten the other customers or the two employees of the store. Dozens of police units converged upon the scene within minutes of the assault, but by then the cop-killer had escaped. Even directly after the massacre, authorities did not suspect gang activity in the shootings, “because a gang wouldn’t want to draw attention to themselves.”

Officials do not have a motive, but they have not ruled out a copycat killing in what some news outlets are already describing as a war on cops in Washington. Insanity is being hinted at by a family member. Clemmons’ sister says he claimed to have sent letters to the president, and that he expected Obama to confirm him as the living messiah.

His interest in President Obama may also suggest the possibility of a twisted political motivation for the killings. If this turns out to be the case, the shooting will be just the latest politically motivated attack on police officers in Washington state in recent memory.

Christopher John Monfort — an anti-Bush, anti-war leftist — was shot by police officers on November 10 as they converged on him as a suspect in the October 31 ambush of two Seattle police officers.

Monfort allegedly used a .223 Kel-Tec SU16 carbine in the Halloween murder of police officer Timothy Brenton and the wounding of his partner, trainee Britt Sweeney. He is also suspected of carrying out an October 22 firebombing of four police vehicles that police think may have been another attempt to kill first responders. Monfort apparently burned the police command vehicle — a converted RV — and set bombs under the police cars to target police officers and firefighters responding to the arson. The bombs hidden under the three police cars detonated just as authorities arrived, and no one was injured. After his arrest, other IEDs were found in Monfort’s home.

Monfort had attended the University of Washington, graduating in 2008 with a degree in law, societies, and justice. An African-American, Monfort had carried out a study of jury nullification and was apparently specifically interested in how it applied to black defendants charged with non-violent crimes. Jury nullification is the process of a jury declaring a defendant not guilty even if they believe the defendant committed the crime. It is often touted as a protest against unjust laws. Monfort was a disciple of Paul Butler, a George Washington University law professor who championed jury nullification as a way of combating what he saw as racial bias in the legal system. Monfort once wrote: “My goal is the subversion of American criminal justice, at least as it now exists.”

Seven years prior to Monfort’s domestic terrorist attacks, another leftist radical educated in the area murdered a small town California police officer in hopes of triggering a revolution.

In November 2002, Andrew Mickel — a journalist at left-wing Indymedia who was educated at Evergreen State College in Olympia (just 20 miles down I-5 from the scene of Sunday’s murders) — assassinated California police officer David Mobilio in hopes of starting a war against capitalism. He bragged about the murder of Mobilio on an Indymedia web posting, saying:

Hello Everyone, my name’s Andy. I killed a Police Officer in Red Bluff, California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country. Now I’m coming forward, to explain that this killing was also an action against corporate irresponsibility.

Mickel was convicted of first-degree murder in 2005 and now sits on California’s death row.

Law enforcement is a dangerous line of work and always has been, but it has been relatively rare in modern times for American police officers to be the subject of an offensive attack. Most shootings involving police officers occur as officers respond to the scene of an emergency call or during a traffic stop. It is exceedingly rare for motivated killers to seek out and “hunt” officers.

We now know that three of those rare attacks (one by Mickel, two by Monfort) in the past decade were perpetrated by college-educated leftists who may have been radicalized during the course of their education in this area, with Sunday’s murders potentially the work of a third killer who had (possibly disturbed) interest in the president and who also hated police.

Is there a cultural issue at play? While the University of Washington doesn’t have the anti-authority, radicalized reputation of UC Berkeley, Evergreen State College has certainly staked its claim as a radicalized place of learning. Prior to the infamy brought to the school by Andrew Mickel’s assassination of Mobilio, the school was perhaps best known for the death of one of its other radicalized students, Rachel Corrie. Corrie was an American member of the pro-terrorist International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and was killed as she tried to block an Israeli bulldozer that was attempting to level Palestinian homes thought to have been used to conceal weapons smuggling tunnels in Gaza.

It may very well turn out that Sunday’s ambush did not have a political motive and perhaps was merely the bloody work of a violent ex-con, but in light of the political nature of both Monfort’s and Mickel’s attacks and the possibility that Clemmons was trying to emulate Monfort, it may still be worth investigating why this area attracts individuals determined to make law enforcement officers their victims.

His interest in President Obama may also suggest the possibility of a twisted political motivation for the killings. If this turns out to be the case, the shooting will be just the latest poltically-motivated attack on police officers in Washington state in recent memory.

The article you’re referencing makes it quite clear that the letter to Obama was only the most recent act in what is most obviously a history of severe mental illness:

In another instance, Clemmons was accused of gathering his wife and young relatives around at 3 or 4 in the morning and having them all undress. He told them that families need to “be naked for at least 5 minutes on Sunday,” a Pierce County sheriff’s report says.

“The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus,” the report says.

As part of the child-rape investigation, the sheriff’s office interviewed Clemmons’ sister in May. She told them that “Maurice is not in his right mind and did not know how he could react when contacted by Law Enforcement,” a sheriff’s report says.

“She stated that he was saying that the secret service was coming to get him because he had written a letter to the President. She stated his behavior has become unpredictable and erratic. She suspects he is having a mental breakdown,” the report says.

Deputies also interviewed other family members. They reported that Clemmons had been saying he could fly and that he expected President Obama to visit to “confirm that he is Messiah in the flesh.”

Prosecutors in Pierce County were sufficiently concerned about Clemmons’ mental health that they asked to have him evaluated at Western State Hospital. Earlier this month, on Nov. 6, a psychologist concluded that Clemmons was competent to stand trial on the child-rape and other felony charges, according to court records.

This is certainly the most inventive attempt to draw attention away from Huckabee’s obvious taint from this incident. I assume anyone with the ability to click on the links you post, will, in short order find you to either be insane or a liar. However, that rules out the majority of your readers.

Noting the full beard and previous prison time of the suspect, one might be tempted to think Black Muslim. There is then no need to postulate any reason for the act. black Muslims are mostly recruited in prisons and already hate white people and the police. Perhaps we need to acknowledge that Muslim beliefs are less religion and more politics.

So…was Tim McVeigh “right wing” as the Democrats claimed at the time? Was Rush Limbaugh to blame for the Oklahoma City bombing? Quite a few people hated Bill Clinton but only McVeigh and his conspirators blew up a building. Today, many people complain about the police state, the wars, the Patriot Act, and the Federal Reserve; are they all terrorists? Do the actions of a few terrorists discredit the millions of people who think the country is heading in the wrong direction?
Maybe the old Left-Right distinctions have lost their relevance?
Is Ron Paul a man of the left or the right?

The article you’re referencing makes it quite clear that the letter to Obama was only the most recent act in what is most obviously a history of severe mental illness:

I don’t know where you got hate crime out of that, nor how you would prove that it was a hate crime, seeing as the person in question believes he can fly and that he is the messiah. But go your own way; god made you for a reason I suppose. Perhaps to cause mirth to people with interactive brain hemispheres.

Noting the full beard and previous prison time of the suspect, one might be tempted to think Black Muslim. There is then no need to postulate any reason for the act. black Muslims are mostly recruited in prisons and already hate white people and the police. Perhaps we need to acknowledge that Muslim beliefs are less religion and more politics.

This statement is pretty close to a psychological definition of delusion.

“This is certainly the most inventive attempt to draw attention away from Huckabee’s obvious taint from this incident.”

I have no interest in doing anything of the sort. Mike Huckabee has long been a mushy sentimentalist. He has pardoned dangerous criminals and advocated on behalf of various welfare programs. Anne Coulter told him to his face that while he is a decent and likable fellow—she could never support him for president! I have publicly taken Huckabee to task for remaining in the Republican nomination process of 2008 when it was obvious he had no realistic hope of winning. He severely damaged Mitt Romney’s campaign and strengthened John McCain’s. Barack Obama likely would not be president today if it were not for the inadvertent assistance of Mike Huckabee.

I live in the Seattle area. The actual shooting took place in Lakewood, a bedroom community of Tacoma, not far from the Fort Lewis Army base in Pierce County. The Leschi neighborhood in Seattle where the swat team was assembled is approximately 40-50 miles north. It is a very affluent community on the shore of Lake Washington that is bordered on the west by the Central District, a much less affluent neighborhood with a very dense ethnic population, such as use the services of Acorn. I have no idea what it means; but he traveled through densely populated black neighborhood to go to earth in a very affluent white neighborhood.

While it makes an for interesting speculation there is no reason to suspect that a nutball ex-con has political motivations for anything. Pointing to his Obama letter as an indication is the same as saying McVeigh was right wing.

Really, @number 10. Can you then explain how a rational individual who’s read the SeattleTimes article that you yourself link to, could entertain the notion that the suspect’s alleged act could be political in nature? One would have to be illiterate or cognitively impaired to come to that conclusion, given the abundance of information that indicates that he was mentally ill.http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010385617_webmansought29.html?syndication=rss

Once is an accident.
Twice is a coincidence.
Three times is enemy action.

Two out of three is not bad, but unless
Clemmons can be shown to have moved there,
and/or acted there, out of radical belief,
rather than insanity: No cigar.

Humans are the results of unintelligent
design by the Selfish Genome, not perfect
products of the One Watchmaker; Their
personality traits are “A weird assemblage
of poorly organized experiments” – Heinlein

If a particular population has a healthy
disrespect for authority, its faulty
individuals will have an unhealthy
hostility towards authority.

This applies both to those in Academe and
Church who teach and preach violence, and
those who listen to them; Not so much to
natural born killers.

Oh moho, when you borrow the prose of another person which fits your template and supply ready-made quotes, you dispel any notion that you are here for debate. Instead you are a paid poster here to incite.

But you stepped right into it. You are the one here trying to defend this thug by reason of insanity just like you defended Hasan by insanity. Why isn’t it a hate crime? Why do blacks never get charged with a hate crime when they kill white Americans? Why do muslims never get charged with hate crimes when they kill white Americans?

I was merely getting you to respond in the manner I wanted to show that your defense of the indefensible is quite immature.

You cannot debate here on a rational and adult manner because you are neither rational or mature.

for a moment here I was happy to be a muslim.. an was thinking thank god this killer was not a muslim!!! can you imagine if he was? holly hell!!! but it seems it does not matter because he has beard and was in jail so he is a muslim!!! can’t win for losing!!!
Blotto: did you read my sugesstion regarding religion?

There aren’t a lot of facts right now aside from his criminal record. The rest is just here say.

I wouldn’t be shocked to find out he is Muslim, as others have mentioned there is a lot of recruitment in the prisons. However, he can just as likely bat guano crazy. We’ll have to wait and see.

As to this qualifying as a “hate crime” it all depends on whether or not he expressed a hatred of whites and cops. Personally I think hate crime laws are a crock of manure. why is killing someone over their skin color, sexual preference, religion, or gender worse than killing them over a pair of shoes, jealousy, money, or anything else?

i am a devoted reader of this site which normally produces reasoned conservative thought… this however is an absurd article. is pajamas the right’s answer to dailykos? shame on pajamas for going ahead with it.
i would like to see an article and every single person who posts point out that this is Huckabee’s doing. thank god this will ruin him for 2012.
paranoia and delusion. sad, sad article.

What can you say? Bill Ayers wanted to kill cops, preached revolution and is now coupled up nice and Cozy with the POTUS Obama PBUH I have read where Ayers also wrote the POTUS book. So you have a Weatherman (wannabe cop and Soldier killer) now in the administration in power and he has copy cats who want a job in DC later on.
Perhaps the perp read Ayers weatherman manifesto and got all radicalized.

I found it interesting that the author spells out the type of firearm used by the killer Monfort but leaves out the brand of gasoline he used in his homemade molotov cocktails, as if the type and brand of firearm was somehow a factor in his deadly crime. He used a firearm in the commission of a deadly attack- a crime. ‘Nuff said.

It requires no prescience to see that Huckabee’s chance for political office was also shot down in Lakewood (frankly I never took him seriously as a candidate anyway). But neither do I see anything linking Clemmons to the radical academic culture that generated vermin like Monfort or Mickel, or the jihadi network that Hasan communicated with. Looks like a solo sociopath.

The author’s slant on this guy’s “motivation” seems premature and based mostly on the prior actions of others and conjecture. Chill for awhile, Owens, until more facts are known. Ditto for Gernot. Too soon to play the “maybe he’s Muslim” card. That’s a churlish notion without the facts. Plenty of time afterward to place the blame for this tragedy once the facts emerge.

On the other issue Huckabee already misplayed his hand last time around. Imo only a fool would think this country will elect another former Arkansas governor president so soon after billyboy. Particularly one who’s so soft on so many core issues. Wishful thinking, maybe, but mostly a wasted and “spoiling” effort. He needs to consider the nation’s needs over than his own ambition.

I did think it instructive the media put more effort into rapidly researching and reporting a conservative Governor’s record than that of a liberal US Senator. Or maybe it was just that Huckabee actually did something while he was in office.

In what extent Clemmons was inspired by Obama’s mobilizing rhetoric & deeds is yet to be seen.
But the Obamatons’ jumpiness makes one think that as the lines and shades that make for Obama’s personality sketch get more precise, you get more and more defensive -
Which is good news -

Willie Horton was a convicted murderer at the time of his commutation, Maurice Clemmons was a convicted… burglar! The left is grasping at straws trying to make a comparison instead of asking themselves a very simple question, “Why was an accused child rapist allowed to bail out of jail”? Ahh, the stench of progressive, politically correct hypocrisy in the North West is absolutely acrid.

My statement re his possible motivation still stands. Very few non-muslim black men have full beards, because they don’t want to be mistaken for muslims. I realize liberal flacks always avoid the facts and go for the cheap shots of dementia or racism to quell reasoned arguments. On the other hand he could just be a prison acculturated cop hater. We’ll never know because this guy is a walking dead man. If he’s smart, he’s on his way to Canada, where he will not be sent back to face the death penalty. I think this is a copy cat killing of the Fort Hood shootings, with cops substituted for soldiers. Only thing missing is “allahu akbar”.

Great. Another thread of moho inane filibuster nonsense. Please do not respond to this nut.

As for the article, if this guy had ever been seen watching the Ten Commandments, he would be called a wingnut by the typical Michael Moore lefty as he was obviously influenced to commit these crimes by Charlton Heston.

Seriously, I would prefer to call a wack job a wack job until there is real evidence some twisted ideology was involved. No need to follow up lefty gracelessness with more of the same.

Misanthropicus. That really is upside down logic. We’re jumping…not the guy who wrote an article devoid of information, but which purports nevertheless to investigate an alleged political connection to Obama in the murders. You believe what you want to believe, and this is certainly even more evidence. A letter to Obama stating that he should acknowledge Clemmon’s powers of flight and messianic status could only be considered evidence of a political motivation by someone with minimal faculties.

I don’t think Mr. Owens is jumping any fences here — there is a virulent anti-cop industry that tacitly-to-overtly encourages violence against law enforcement, and it is supported by everyone from college presidents to putative Republicans. Huckabee gets off on this stuff every bit as much as Noam Chomsky, except he was far more efficient in his efforts to free offenders who went on the rape and kill again.

The empathy/leniency axis has claimed four more lives. Can we just say that?

Is it any coincidence that the killer of these four cops was a child-rapist, just like Lovelle Mixon, who killed four Oakland cops in March? The self-pity of men who rape children, combined with a jailhouse rhetoric that claims our prisons are stuffed with innocent men, creates an atmosphere where killing officers is equated with freedom fighting.

So long as we have hate crime laws on the books, which we should not, we should at least pretend to apply them equally. Targeting cops is targeting people because of their identity: where are Eric Holder, and Obama, and their new federal statute, now?

RE #27/moho:
[...] an article devoid of information, but which purports nevertheless to investigate an alleged political connection to Obama in the murders. [...]

Jomo, we didn’t need Clemmons for getting an enhanced landscape of Obama’s connections and sympathies for left-wing radicals –
For your empowerment here’s again the very brief list of said figures which I provided before:

If someone shot ACORN workers and then claimed he did it because Palin appeared to him in a vision, I know damn well moho and company would not dismiss it as the solo ravings of an individual whackjob. No, they would be accusing every conservative in the country of being an accessory to the crime.

In this case – let’s wait and see what comes out. Right now it does sound to me like the solo ravings of an individual whackjob.

And I have no problem whatsover with blaming Huckabee for releasing this thug. This ends any prospects Huck entertained for 2012. I’m not sorry about that one bit – the tragedy is that 4 innocent cops died because this character was released and shouldn’t have been.

I won’t forget it was Mike H. who let this creep out – but let’s make it clear that it was a liberal motivation that inspired it – boo hoo, Clemmons was so young when he committed those crimes he just wasn’t responsible and should be punished like he was an older person. I blame Mike Huckabee for letting him out and letting this liberal drivel be what he listened to.

I should add a few points to my earlier post arguing that Mike Huckabee was indispensable to the election of Barack Obama. He refused to drop out of the Republican nomination race. Sadly, he continued to attract the votes of countless Evangelical Christians that would have gone reluctantly to Mitt Romney. They would have bit their tongues and cast their ballot for their second choice. Alas, the Arizona U.S. Senator became the GOP nominee—-and the rest is history. McCain categorically would not take Obama to task for his long-term relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and he sounded like an idiot when discussing economic matters. Romney would not have hesitated to make the Chicago area pastor a legitimate issue, and he would have kicked the Democratic Party’s nominee’s butt in a debate over the American economy. It is indeed very fair to blame Huckabee’s immature and possibly vindictive behavior in helping Obama move into the White House.

WA state is radical. My nice upscale neighbors all listen to Pacifica radio, can’t get through a dinner party without denouncing military personnel as emotionally “damaged”, and all belong to the Nature Conservancy even though the no growth policies are strangling our town.
With the current Gov. I see no change, but I will call my state rep. about these killings.

1. biblio44:
“His interest in President Obama may also suggest the possibility of a twisted political motivation for the killings.”

Jeez, I don’t remember the right being concerned about Willie Horton’s “motivation.” But then again, Horton was freed by a Democrat.

I’m in, sorry ‘Bout late to the game folks but this one is too easy. .. LOL

Not only was ‘Horton’ freed by a demorat, it was a demorat who first brought up the subject in the primaries. Kinda’ like it was a liberal who first put pen to ..”Barrack The majick Negro”.

As far as Huckabee. He is a fraud, I will not vote for him, would rather Dear Reader have another term. After all The One(idiot) is doing more for real America.. Conservative/Libertarian America than even a Hundred Reagans could do.

34. David Thomson: Both posts were spot on, imo, but that’s really another thread.
29. Tina Trent: Agree with most of your comments, its just I don’t live close enough to WA to assume your first point. Spot on for everything else yhou said. Just don’t believe Owens’ piece is up to PJM standards.
25. gernot: But is the photo you are basing your assumptions on current? Did he still have a beard as of yesterday? Inquiring minds want to know before we jump on that band wagon. Just to be fair, maybe.

Sometimes , nix that. Usually people have to stare into the void as they teeter, arms flailing to avoid that fall. It was the voids time to win in 2008… no mater who was in opposition. Now maybe reason has a chance.

Don’t see any reason to speculate on political motivation at this time… no evidence but coincidence, and very little of that.

I do find it surprising how quickly people forget about the history of recently-executed snipers, however. Yeah, John Allen Muhammad got his gun in Tacoma, which in case you don’t know, is a pretty rough place, with gang murders not all that uncommon. And it’s much closer to this crime than Seattle is.

“It was the voids time to win in 2008… no mater who was in opposition.”

Mitt Romney would have ceaselessly hammered Obama on his associations with Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and other disreputable people. By September—the majority of voters would have been too reluctant to take a chance on Obama. Romney would have easily won. The politically correct John McCain’s unwillingness to attack Obama on these legitimate matters was wrongly interpreted by many voters that they really were no big deal. They failed to comprehend on how adamant he was to not criticize a so-called man of color. This would have never occurred had Obama and Wright been white and members of far right-wing groups. McCain would have come out swinging.

I also think there is a 50/50 possibility that Maurice Clemmons was somehow encouraged by Islamic radicals to murder the four police officers. How did he get the $15,000 bail money? This is a highly unusual incident. To be blunt, statistically it is off the charts. I am not infallible, but my gut instincts tell me that Clemmons was partially motivated by Muslim extremism. Sigh, everyone has the right to make fun of me if my suspicions prove unfounded.

“it may still be worth investigating why this area attracts individuals”

It’s that arrogant protectionist attitude which keeps the northwest in the dark. No region is immune to social ills or deviance. When brutal crimes occur in the northwest it’s as if “these people” are not a product of this environment. People try and blame foreign or intrusive entities which allegedly don’t manifest themselves locally. Conveniently forgetting that Kip Kinkel & Buford Furrow, were home grown killers who imitated crimes reflected in all regions of our nation.

YOU ALL NEED TO CALM DOWN, NOT ENOUGH INFO IS AVAILABLE AS YET. American academia owns part of this no matter what the outcome left v right.

It is apparent from watching the shouting matches in certain universities where controversial speakers are presenting that a substantial portion of American academia post-secondary has lost its way in search of the free exchange of ideas, research or convivial discussions of controversial issues.

This society sinks further toward “Rome” with each passing incident. I wonder how low we will go before folks appear armed in the street? At my age I hope I will not be here to see it, but many of you likely will. And its on or collective heads for not stopping this destructive behavior.

Four people are dead, look at the extended family structure and you will find more than one hundred people to some degree directly affected by this terrorist incident. Pundits hold your fire for awhile. the truth wills out.
Redball6

I dunno about that one. Haven’t heard anything that makes me think this shooting in Lakewood has anything to do with leftists. This guy Clemmons just sounds like your garden variety criminal scumbag, and at this point, he’s just a suspect.

Think I’d like to hear a little more about it, before I start leaping to conclusions.

As a lifetime (57 yrs) Washington resident, I can attest to our leftist governments’ and courts’ leniency and appeasment of violent criminals. Our judges seem to care more about the rights and “feelings” of these evil subhumans than they care about victims of crimes and public safety in general. It is as if it were all one big social experiment. An experiment with no consequences, for no matter how corrupt, incompetent and out of touch Democrats demonstrate themselves to be, they seldom have to worry about being re-elected.

Wonder if the TROLL Moho knows the statistics regarding Blacks and crimes of violence including murders. Blacks who constitute about 13% of the US population are responsible for OVER 56% of the violent crimes. A Black is statistically 10 times more likely to be a murderer than a white. The most common cause of death in Blacks under 30 is murder and usually at the hands of other Blacks.
Still think there nothing in it Moho still think that Blacks are being stigmatised? But then you think that the 14000 Mohammedan TERRORIST attacks worldwide just since 9/11 say nothing about Islam either dont you and that just sums YOU up.

Huckabee is a mush-headed idiot who let dangerous criminals loose so he could feel good about himself. The judge who let Clemmons, with a violent criminal history a mile long, go free on $150k bail while facing charges of raping a 12 year old girl is a moron. Clemmons record is one of repeated, recidivist behavior excused and ignored by a justice sysem that doesn’t give a damn about protecting innocent citizens against violent thugs like this. Both parties, Republican and Democrat, have become complicit in this. We’re going to have more problems like this until we get serious about violent criminals. They don’t get reformed. They aren’t misguided youths. They are dangers to the rest of us. Our judicial system needs a thorough cleansing, including relieving a whole bunch of judges of their robes, staffing parole boards with serious people, and wrecking DAs careers when they let someone like this off easy.

@34
It is indeed very fair to blame Huckabee’s immature and possibly vindictive behavior in helping Obama move into the White House.

~~~

possibly vindictive? He’s the one who started *attacking* Romney for being a Mormon, a religion generally consisting of hardworking, law-abiding and community active people. (of course, if you can’t beat on policy – make personal attacks. The huckster must have been reading Alinsky.)
Perhaps he was upset his fellow religionist, Dobson, endorsed Romney, and NOT him. And yes, I agree with you – Huckabee played his part in the won’s election by getting a weak RINO the nomination. (who would have done worse without Sarah.) He has much to answer for.

I had little if any awarness of huckabee before last year, but he gave me the creeps *almost* as much as obeymugabe.

Isn’t the current administration’s underlying philosophy about imprisonment: open the doors? Didn’t Ayers write a book on that subject that Obama positively blurbed?
These beliefs figure into teir future chaotic plans.

51:the cooper color code:yeah right.go from writing on a laptop to having a handgun going off next to your ear.if the [string of expletives] had known how to use a pistol,he would have killed all of them before the fourth stood up.

Still think there nothing in it Moho still think that Blacks are being stigmatised?

I don’t recall writing that blacks were being stigmatized, but I know that reading, along with understanding, is not your strong suit. Its obvious to most people that blacks are stigmatized. Uncrazed people find this abhorent and would like it to change; people like you spend most of their time trying to find ways to rationalize it.

But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/01race.html?_r=1&hp

The major point of this tragedy is the loss of four police officers would never have happened if Republican Governor Mike Huckabee didn’t pardon him. Nothing worse than bleeding-heart conservative Governors.

It may not be Leftist motivation but rather Muslim motivation and racism, to boot, that motivated the killer. Check out this just developing story about how the website of an offshoot of the Nation of Islam is praising the killer (http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/)

At the website above Clemmons is pictured with a crown on his head with the police officers he gunned down as background wallpaper, and the caption reads, “Celebrate Brother Maurice Clemmons’ Daring Stand Against White Police Terrorism.”

There is nothing mushy about wanting to do justice, and there was nothing just about Clemmons’ sentence in Arkansas. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in jail (because the sentence handed down by the court exceeded his life expectancy), but not for murder, nor rape, nor kidnapping, nor an attempt to commit any of the above, but for armed robbery and burglary. It would be just to shoot a home invader in the act, because you presume him to be a clear and present danger to your life and your family’s lives, but you can’t condemn him to death or life in prison if he is arrested and has not killed, raped or kidnapped anyone. Even the judge who presided over the case deemed the sentence extreme. Furthermore, Huckabee did not release him- he commuted the sentence to 47 years. That the parole board proceeded to grant him parole and then not enforce the terms of the parole is not Huckabee’s fault.

The judges who granted Clemmons bail, however, have no excuse. He was accused of raping a child, so he should not have been granted bail at all, and if required by law to offer bail, then bail should have been set above $1,000,000.

A man who claims he’s Jesus is not a Muslim, but rather either a cult leader or a nutcase. This man was a nutcase. That the Nation of Islam is rallying around him indicts the Nation of Islam as a seditious organization, but it does not mean this man was a Muslim.

#36 mel, SOME of WA state is radical. It depends on where you live. I’m a retired Navy chief in Kitsap County (across the Sound from Seattle), and with the exception of Bainbridge Island and a few isolated neighborhoods here and there (elitists in Poulsbo, welfare cases in Bremerton), is a fairly reasonable place. Especially Eastern Washington. Having said that, there is a lot of Kool-Aid consumed in the Evergreen State. I miss Alaska.

These are actual quotes from our President, I didn’t make this up. You are welcome to follow up and research these statements. I welcome on debate on this subject.

THIS IS YOUR PRESIDENT

FORWARD TO ALL YOU CAN
Everyone of voting age should read these two books.. Don’t buy them, get them from the library before they are removed from the shelves.

From Dreams of My Father: ‘I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.’

From Dreams of My Father : ‘I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.’

From Dreams of My Father: ‘There was something about her that made me wary, a little too sure of herself, maybe and white.

From Dreams of My Father: ‘It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.’

From Dreams of My Father: ‘I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself: the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.’

And FINALLY, and most scary!

From Audacity of Hope: ‘I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.’

62. Edward A: That’s only a major point if you’re a warped progressive thinking the lives of police officers are worth less than political “gotchas”. Your shallowness reflects poorly on your values. 66. Myth Buster’s take is spot on. Learn from it.

One day, someone’s going to have a ball studying you authoritarian nimrods’ fascination with being forced to don chadors and fellate Muslims while simultaneously being reemed by powerful African American men.

Gernot wrote: “Noting the full beard and previous prison time of the suspect, one might be tempted to think Black Muslim. There is then no need to postulate any reason for the act. black Muslims are mostly recruited in prisons and already hate white people and the police. Perhaps we need to acknowledge that Muslim beliefs are less religion and more politics.”

Later he wrote: “My statement re his possible motivation still stands. Very few non-muslim black men have full beards, because they don’t want to be mistaken for muslims.”

What the H-E double hocky sticks are you talking about. I am a black man and the reason I don’t wear full beard is because I am genetically predisposed to “sommer hair,” some hair here and some hair there. Your comments are a prime example of ridiculous assumption.

First, if the black muslims you are refering to are Nation of Islam muslims, you should know that NOI men tend to be clean shaven. Look at the pictures of Iliajah Muhammed, Malcom X (the early ones), Muhammed Ali (when he was a member), and Louis Farrakhan. All clean shaven. Not all sects of Islam require men to wear long beards. There are some that emphasize neat appearance and beards are frowned upon because they are seen as less refined. cehck out line 8 on the following site if you doubt this. http://openjurist.org/126/f3d/119. Personally, if I did not want to be confused for being a muslim, I would avoid wearing bow ties and shaving all the hair off of my face.

Second, I am a Black man who associates with several other Black men who happen to be Christians and wear full beards. In fact, I would say that half of my circle of Black male friends (6 of 12) currently wear full beards and 10 of the 13 of us have worn full beards at some point in the last 12 months. My uncles, dad and two cousins also have worn full beards. None of them are particularly concerned about being confused for a Muslim. While I do not pretend to know how all black men think, I am fairly certain that most black men could careless what others think about how they choose to groom themselves. I’m not calling you a racist but I am saying that your comment is rather ignorant. Do not presume to speak for Black men when you obviously have no clue.

A Black friend of mine once said that Black men don’t smile. That it is culutral for us to remain stoic. I laughed when my white female friend, “C smiles.” the moral of the story is, “People would avoid all encompassing statements. They look stupid when they make them.” They are good for a laugh though. Thanks for the laugh Gernot.

Pragmatist wrote “13% of the US population are responsible for OVER 56%” of violent crime. Your numbers are not entirely accurate. The numbers you quote have to do with interacial crime. Walter Williams wrote in an “Ugly Conspiracy of Silence”, “of the 2,025,464 violent crimes committed by blacks in 1994, 1,140,670 were against whites — that’s slightly over 56 percent. Whites committed 5,114,692 violent crimes; 135,360, or 2.6 percent were against blacks.” This is different from saying that 56% of all violent crimes are committed by blacks. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams081899.asp
The article also states that whites are more twice as likely to be victims of hate crime.

As a Black man I am appalled at this statistic, but we need to be carful how we use statistical data because we can obscure the truth. The Bureau of Justice reports the 86% of all crime coommitted against Whites was committed by other Whites between the years 1976 to 2005. The number for Black was 94%. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm. There is also a strong link between social economic status and crime rates. The poorer the person, the more likely the person is to committ violent crime.

Most violent crime is not committed by black people. A larger number proportion of the Black population commits violent crimes than do Whites, but most crime is committed by whites because whites make a larger portion of the population. check out the stats:
■In nonmetropolitan counties in 2007, most arrestees (82.1 percent) were white. Black persons accounted for 14.4 percent of all arrestees, and the remainder of arrestees were of other races.
■Of the individuals arrested in nonmetropolitan counties for violent crimes, 73.8 percent were white. Of those arrested for property crimes, 82.2 percent were white.
■More than 81 percent (81.1) of the juveniles (persons under the age of 18) arrested in the Nation’s nonmetropolitan counties in 2007 were white.
■In 2007, white persons under the age of 18 accounted for 67.7 percent of violent crime arrestees and 83.5 percent of property crime arrestees in nonmetropolitan counties.
Information taken from, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_61.html

Blacks do commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, though not the majority, since they only constitute 1/8 of the population. The question is why do blacks commit so much violent crime, and the answer is that so many blacks grow up without fathers. It’s a major problem in other demographics, too, but blacks have it the worst with a 70% illegitimacy rate. Teach black men that they need to be responsible fathers, and most of the problems the black community has will disappear within a generation.

Good point mythbuster. I would like to point out in some cases, the lack of a father figure cannot be helped, so we need surrogate fathers. That is where we all can help, any responsible man can be a role model to a fatherless child. We need to stop talking about these problems
and do something about them.

I know, sometimes people die, or get too sick to function. Remarrying can also be trouble- how many women don’t find out their new boyfriend/husband is a pedophile until he rapes one of her children? Still, we can deal this problem, but not if they are unwilling to acknowledge that this is a problem. One thing I’m not sure people take into consideration when searching for a mate is not only should you ask, “Will this person make a good life partner and sex partner?” but also, “Will this person make a good parent?” After all, you’re choosing a parent for your children.

I’m sick of people who think all Muslims are terrorists, or hateful people. Muslim and Christianity are not that different. The big difference is opinion on Christ’s divinity, but both preach his teachings: love, peace, charity, etc. Even if you read the first part of the Koran and the Bible, they are almost identical. Like Colin Powell pointed out, what’s wrong with Muslim children growing up believing they can president, too? Just as all races, genders, religions, and orientations should. Al Qaeda is terrible, but they in no way represent all of Islam. It’s the same as some Christians are good people, some aren’t. Don’t generalize or categorize people based on anything other than their character.

Those quotes that were posted by Oscar and everyone else are taken out of context. I don’t care if you agree or like Obama, but to connect him to this is just ridiculous. This guy thought he was Jesus! I think his “quote” had more to do with the fact that the POTUS would claim him as Jesus, not the fact that it’s Obama.

This has nothing to do with the fact that Washington is a Democratic-leaning state. I know tons of radical conservatives, as well as radical liberals. And there moderates like myself. Most people aren’t radical either. I’ve seen people with Obama t-shirts and people with signs of Obama as Hitler in Seattle. How does political-orientation explain the motive to kill cops anyways? It doesn’t make sense. You could argue that it’s rightist by saying cops are a part of “big government”. You could blame the killing of the Census Bureau worker as a racial conservative motive, but I think again, those people were just mentally insane and sick.

He’s obviously just another nutcase who went beserk and committed a terrible, awful act. Why would he target cops?… This guy has been arested before so I can only imagine that he would be less than fond of them to say the least. Especially if he’s Jesus, how dare they! Stop trying to politicize this or turn it into a spectacle. It’s despicable. Exploiting the tragic murder of 4 people to spark unnecessary controversy and push your own agenda? Shame. Instead we should just be greiving for the lives that were lost and their families. If not, then leave it alone.

The overrepresentation of blacks in jails can be attributed mainly to the damage of Jim Crow’s laws. Sure, they were abolished along with slavery, but that doesn’t mean the effects vanish as well. That’s why you see the discrepancy in educational systems in cities/areas that are predominantly African-American. This can be a devastating cycle as schools that underperform are more likely to lose funding as elite schools receive more funding, thus further widening the gap between poor schools and schools that have more availability in resources.

Many of these schools are designed to fail. The huge disparity is not necessarily due to poor teaching, and certainly not because “black kids are dumber”. You want to keep people out of jail? Give kids an equal and adequate education. Level the field of opportunity. One statistic that makes sense is the number of high-school drop outs in jail.

The harsher sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine is also nonsensical. Both have the same chemical make up, so why should the sentencing be any different. That is a serious flaw that can explain the skewed ratio of African Americans in drug arrests.

Children abandoned by their fathers would obviously have a negative effect on a child’s life as well. Although I think education is the key and that is something we as a society can offer. We can’t force someone to be a good father.

Yes, the criminal justice system has major flaws. But a higher percentage among blacks that are arrested vs. whites, Hispanics, etc. is not because black people are inherently bad people. It’s because of our ugly history of race in America and the result of living in a country that was once dominated by a Jim Crow mentality and false idealogy of superiority.

So, the Bible and the Qur’an contain a lot of the same material, huh? There is a reason for that.

It is very hard to find out what really happened during the beginning of Islam, since contemporary Muslims, aided by Saudi money and influence and the threat of violence, have made sure that only a handful of Western scholars still dare to delve into Muhammad’s history and the beginnings of Islam, and the handful that do so write under pseudonyms for fear for their personal safety, and all archeological research in Saudi Arabia that might shed light on Muhammad, on the origins and content of the Qur’an, and on Islam’s formation has been shut down; apply for a permit to dig and it may well end your academic career, and will certainly not be granted.

By the 6th century A.D. when Muhammad was born, the Jewish Torah was ancient, and the Christian New Testament was some six hundred years old. The area around Mecca where the illiterate orphan Muhammad grew up had large concentrations of pagan Arabs, Nestorian Christians and Jews, and some scholars have theorized that while the young Muhammad was living in Mecca and then driving camels carrying merchandise on various trips throughout the Arabian peninsula for the businesswoman who became his first wife, he picked up a lot of information about and herd tales from both the Torah and the New Testament. There is also some evidence that the scribe who wrote down some or all of the verses of the Qur’an that Muhammad “received” had once been a Nestorian Christian.

So, Muhammad basically hijacked and rewrote portions of both the Torah (i.e. the Old Testament) and the New Testament to give his new “religion” of Islam a history and legitimacy. In the Qur’an Abraham now became the first Muslim, with all the people of the world who came after being Muslims too—though the accursed, obstinate Jews and all other “unbelievers” deny it, the Jewish God became Allah, the Old and New Testaments were now inferior, twisted, incorrect and/or incomplete versions of the one, eternal, perfect, true Qur’an, and Jesus now became a Muslim prophet named Issa (who did not die on the cross and who was not resurrected) but who, nonetheless, on the “Last Day,” would somehow (despite not being resurrected) descend from Heaven, “”break the Cross” i.e. destroy the false religion of Christianity, and usher in the “Final Day’s” victory of Allah and Islam over all the world, and the universal, eternal supremacy of Allah, Islam and Shari’a law .

I suggest that rather than just take someone’s word that Islam and Christianity, the Bible and the Qur’an are really “similar” and preach the same message, you actually read the three fundamental texts of Islam—the Qur’an, and the supplementary texts that help explain the Qur’an–the Hadiths (the Words and Deeds of the Prophet and his Companions) and the Sira (Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad)–to see for yourself what they say and what they might mean, particularly when compared to the Bible (look here for inexpensive, well researched and indexed paperback copies of all three texts, written in newspaper level English at (http://www.cspipublishing.com/Primary_Doctrine_Books.htm), you can sometimes find these CSPI texts even cheaper on Amazon.com.